Peter's Model Railroading | The Equipment | Box Cars | SP A-50-6
Construction: Final Details

I then cleaned up the interior of the car so that the underframe could slip right in. When I was happy with it, and making sure it was oriented in the correct direction, I applied superglue to the spots on the interior of the body, and then slit the underframe into the body, being careful around the brass wire bent under the body. In retrospect, I should have used 5-minute epoxy, because the superglue grabbed right away. What is shown in this photo are the two locations I have marked with a pencil for where two holes need to be drilled for the legs of the stirrups.

As there are no dimples in the bottom of the body casting, you have to be mindful of the fact that the drill bit can wander off while you are drilling the holes for the stirrups. When I actually installed them, I used a small section of strip styrene to use as a gauge to make sure that all stirrups had about the same distance exposed below the body. Note that some corners had the grab irons sticking into the drilled-out areas, so I had to trim the stirrup's legs shorter to get them to fit properly. Next, I then applied a drop of superglue into each hole, working the glue into the hole left by the drilling process. Some final tweaking of the stirrups is possible once the glue dries.

When those were installed, I declared the model finished. I am not going to install the Carmer levers. I have found them to get in the way when operating on the layout, so while they are prototypically-correct, I compromise on that detail for the sake of operations.

The before-paint 3/4 view.